Monday, December 09, 2013

Rahul Gandhi needs to go

The Congress rout in the states
of Rajasthan, Delhi ,Madhya Pradesh and its inability to win in Chhattisgarh,
despite having everything in its favour, can be dealt in two ways by the party.
The easier and the most likely to be followed method is to blame it on the
regional leaders, regional issues and the regional voters.

The second way of looking at
things, which is unlikely to happen, is to admit that the fault lies at the
top, within the boundaries of Delhi Darbar from where the party functions and
directs the state leaders.

Leaders like Charan Das Mahant,
Ajit Jogi in Chhattisgarh and Jyotiraditya Scindia and Digvijay Singh in Madhya
Pradesh, as was accepted from the loyal soldiers, have accepted that the party
lost because of them. Any insinuation to
party vice president Rahul Gandhi being anyway involved in the defeat was
nipped at the bud.

But is this the case? Shouldn't
the accountability be fixed on Rahul, for the decimation that the Congress
suffered in these states? If not him, then
who?

In both Madhya Pradesh and
Chhattisgarh, the tickets to Congress candidates were distributed as per his
wish list. A term, “Rahul formula”, gained prominence when the candidates were
being shortlisted for ticket distribution. As per that formula, probable candidates
were interviewed, asked to fill in a questionnaire and his trusted aide Kaniska
Singh was asked to help in weeding out the ‘incapable’ candidates who were not
strong enough. The picture that emerged
was that a methodical way was used by Rahul to give tickets.

But what was the end result? In
Madhya Pradesh the party fared worse than it had in 2008.

Astonishingly, the first Congress
list of Madhya Pradesh candidates was declared as late as the first week of November.
Later, a senior leader said that it was because of the involvement of Delhi
Darbar that the tickets distribution was delayed, giving little time for the
candidates to take on a party, which has been in power for the last 10 years. Conversely,
barring a few seats, the BJP had already decided on the probable candidates much
before than their official announcement.

State Chhief Minister Shivraj Singh
Chouhan had realized that there was a huge anti-incumbency against some of his
MLAs, and to counter this, he denied tickets to close to 44 sitting MLAs. The
Congress or rather Rahul Gandhi failed at this front too, with the party deciding
to continue with most of their sitting MLAs.

In Madhya Pradesh, the
appointment of Scindia as the head of the campaign committee was announced in
September, just two months before the polling date.

Did Rahul expect that just two
months of campaigning by Scindia would be enough to take on the 5 years tenure
of Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who was out of Bhopal for most part of these 5 years,
travelling and reaching out to the voters in other parts of the state?

Was it logical to accept that the
voters of the state will prefer someone like Scindia, who prefers to stay in
Delhi and seldom ventures out of Gwalior even if he comes to MP, to someone
like Chouhan who is omnipresent at the doors of the voters with his folded
hands and a smiling face.

Who was the CM candidate of BJP?
It was only Shivraj, neither Narendra Tomar nor Prabhat Jha or Kailash
Vijaywargia. Who was the CM candidate of Congress? Starting from Scindia, the others who were standing
in the line included Kamalnath, Suresh Pachouri, Ajay Rahul Singh and Kantilal
Bhuria.

Never once Rahul could gather the
courage or showed his political wisdom by announcing that who would lead the
state if the party comes to power. This indecision, the unwillingness to act,
which has now become a lethal part of Rahul’s repertoire, hurt the party badly
in the state. And please remember that the position enjoyed by Rahul Gandhi in his party is something that cannot be put down in words. He is Congress.

Looking at the larger picture,
one will realize that rather than the failure of the state leadership, in both Madhya
Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, it was the failure of one individual, who sits in
Delhi and controls everything.

The change that Rahul has been
talking of, since one can remember, needs to come from the top. Someone, maybe Sonia
Gandhi’s political aide Ahmed Patel, needs to tell her that Rahul needs to be replaced
if the party is to be resurrected and stopped from going down into the deep
abyss that it is looking at right now.

Now, after so many years of being
politically active, Rahul stands nowhere. He is neither a youth icon nor the
torchbearer of the experienced. He had has time, a long one, but despite that he
was not able to prove himself among the voters. Emotional speech and resurrecting
the painful family past may attract ears but they do not translate into fingers
who will press the Congress button. For all these years Rahul has shied away from taking responsibilities for the debacle which the Congress suffered under him. He can continue to do so.
In the past, the two large states
of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar had rejected Rahul and the recent rout in Delhi, Madhya
Pradesh and Rajasthan has repeated that message that now a new face is needed. Not
just for the sake of Congress but for the benefit of the democracy.

The Congress needs to accept that
Rahul Gandhi is just not the answer. The halo around him, that he might be the
answer, has long disappeared. Modi wave or no Modi wave, the Congress is in a
bad shape and something drastic needs to be done to keep it in contention and relevant for
2014 and beyond.